Welcome
This is the kitchen where we talk about food, life, and recovery—a spiritual path to healing and peace.

Invitation
You are invited to keep coming back to A Cup of Kindness to share your experience, strength and hope; fears, doubts and insecurities; and to pick up information, inspiration … and have a little fun!

My story
In January 2007, at the age of 51, I joined a 12-step program and began my recovery from food addiction, losing 75 pounds in the process. Read more…

In January 2011, at the age of 55, I began my recovery from a multi-trauma accident, 36 fractures, damaged lungs, and post traumatic stress. Read more…

I am deeply grateful for all the kindnesses, large and small, offered to me in recovery. Here I am... alive… still making progress … still not perfect … finding a new way forward in a growing community of women and men who share a lot in common around food and life.

I hope you'll join me in this kitchen and let me know what's cooking with you.

In Recovery and Loving Kindness

I’m reminded that “in Recovery” is a tender place. It’s a softening. It’s heart opening. It makes me vulnerable… in a good way.

Something I heard at my 12-step meeting for food addicts that got me thinking about this. Our fellow said that when we are in Recovery we should consider that a place of intensive care. I heard this more as a recommendation to pay attention to the focused healing part of intensive care, rather than absorption with the injury or wounds that have taken us there.

In Recovery we work the tools that help us to stay safe and free from harm, inwardly and outwardly. The practice of loving kindness does the same.

We become happier in mind and heart when we are in Recovery. This happens, too, with the practice of loving kindness.

Our bodies are a vehicle for liberation and become healthier and stronger both in Recovery and on the path of loving kindness.

Being in Recovery teaches us we have enough, we do enough, we are enough. Loving kindness practice helps us to live with ease, knowing that we have what we need to support ourselves.

Thanks so much to those lineages of family, loving kindness practitioners, and Recovery fellows who have brought us to life and offered us tools to help us align with our own goodness; and to help us develop a friendly, respectful and mindful relationship with what is arising for us.

May you be safe and protected, inwardly and outwardly.

May you be happy in your mind and heart.

May your body be healthy and strong. And when it’s not healthy and strong, may you be at ease with it, and may it be a vehicle for your liberation.

May you live with ease. May you have what you truly need to support you so that your heart can open.

It reminded me of the chapter on loving-kindness and compassion in Phillip Moffatt’s book, “From Emotional Chaos to Clarity: Move from the Reactive Mind to the Clarity of the Responsive Mind.”

Specifically, he describes (at pp. 127-128) certain phrases he developed for a loving-kindness meditation, and suggests that you repeat them first for yourself, then for your loved ones and friends, then for teachers, strangers, and enemies, and finally for all sentient beings:

“May I be safe from internal and external harm.

May I have a calm, clear mind and a peaceful, loving heart.

May I be physically strong, healthy, and vital.

May I experience love, joy, wonder, and wisdom in this life, just as it is.”